Orlando Bloom: Snapshot

Orlando Bloom: Five Fun Facts

1. Orlando Bloom boarded a Norwegian icebreaker bound for Antarctica in January 2007. The three-week trek offered no luxury to the star, who slept in a tiny bunk and took orders from the crew as he worked the frozen deck.
2. Pirates of the Caribbean castmate Keira Knightley says Orlando Bloom is "a very good kisser" who always has breath mints on hand.
3. Orlando Bloom has been a Buddhist since the age of 19. He adheres to the Japanese Soka Gakkai school of Buddhism. "It's about studying what is going on in my daily life and using that as fuel to go and live a bigger life," he told Details in 2007.
4. Orlando Bloom's mother, language schoolteacher Sonia Bloom, named him after 17th-century British composer Orlando Gibbons.
5. Orlando Bloom has two tattoos: one on his right arm of the Elvish word for nine and another of a sun on his navel, which he calls "a stupid idea" he had at age 15.

Orlando Bloom: Biography

1993

Pushing Through Dyslexia

After struggling with dyslexia through Canterbury High School, Bloom, 16, drops out and moves to London to join the National Youth Theatre. In 1998, while studying at London's esteemed Guildhall School of Music and Drama, Bloom makes his film debut with a bit part in the Oscar Wilde biopic Wilde. Afterwards, he returns to school to finish up his three-year training.

1999

October

No Starving Actors Here

After graduating from Guildhall, Bloom heads to New Zealand to play the blond elfin sharpshooter Legolas in director Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings. The film grosses more than $313 million when it opens in 2001.

2001

December 28

Reporting for Duty

Black Hawk Down, which Bloom shot in Morocco, hits theaters about the same time LOTR comes out. Bloom has a minor role as a soldier in the film, which is about the U.S. Army's ill-fated rescue mission in Mogadishu, Somalia, in 1993.

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Orlando Bloom: Special Feature